Apostate: Preface

I’m going to walk through the problems in several chapters in Kevin Swanson’s book Apostate. So I’ll start with the preface and an introduction to the author.

Kevin Swanson, who studied engineering in the university, is a homeschool dad who documents the breakdown of the Christian faith in the western world on his podcast Generation with Vision. On his podcast, he’s been mocking the bloggers and participants on Homeschoolers Anonymous in order to sale his latest book Apostate: The Men who Destroyed the Christian West . Hence Swanson named us Homeschool Apostates and has, several times, mentioned on his podcasts that homeschool graduates are slipping from the faith (that is, from fundamentalism), and that every homeschool parent should buy his latest book Apostate before their kids turn out like us.

A quick preview of the table of contents shows that each chapter of Apostate discusses a different philosopher (or other thinker) from the past 1500 years who has influenced the breakdown of the current culture. Swanson attempts to show how each different philosopher OMG KILLED the western world.

I am, first of all, skeptical of anyone who writes a critique of philosophy who has no scholarly training in philosophy. Sure I think most people could sit down and read about Descartes’ demon and understand it. But to get the overall “project” of philosophy, it’s important to understand what each individual philosopher responds to or critiques. Philosophy is a web of ideas, and reading one idea is simply not enough to grasp the entire web, much less write a book on the entire web.

I am a graduate student in philosophy, and I would not attempt to write this book.

Swanson initially lets us know that “philosophies are difficult to understand for the layman.” Rather than admitting that we should try to understand the philosopher’s project (or keep our mouth out if we don’t want to learn), he advises the “average Christian” to apply the “useful test” laid out in scripture. Ladies and gentleman, all you gotta do is look at the fruit of the philosophers because the Bible says you shall know them by their fruits.

In other words, Swanson says that if a philosopher’s “daughters committed suicide,” then we know the philosophy is a load of crap, and this saves the “average Christian” the hassle of wrestling with the ideas or even trying to understand it.

Tacky, tacky, not to mention totally insensitive to suicide.

Swanson also says that philosophers are purposely obscure and contradict themselves from paragraph-to-paragraph. Of course, sometimes the philosophers are self-defeating (Swanson also nearly falls into this trap in his epistemology; I’ll mention in a later review); sometimes they are self-defeating on purpose. But philosophers do not contradict themselves from paragraph-to-paragraph, and they are certainly not purposely obscure in order to hide a truth (<–what kind of CONSPIRACY is this? WTH). Most philosophers are brilliant but compact, and some are bad writers but brilliant. A few postmodernists (Derrida and Foucault) write “poorly” in order to decenter the reader. But this is not a conspiracy. As a philosophy student, I can assure people that the more a person reads philosophy, the easier it gets. (Even Foucault, who is notoriously difficult, gets much easier once one begins to understand his project.) The key to understanding philosophy is to keep wrestling, and keep reading, not to label it self-contradictory and obscure.

Swanson states that philosophers fall into “pseudo-intellectualism, convoluted argumentation, and academic hubris” and that “Aristotle as not great, and Thomas Aquinas was not great. Karl Marx and Mark Twain were not great thinkers or writiers” (itilics are his own). Name calling is no way to have an intellectual conversation. Of course, Swanson does not want a conversation as he repeats that we should “analyze a man’s philosophies, not by the ideas,” but “by the fruit of his life and his work.”

Ironically, Swanson next tells us that we need to go to battle and “fight in the war of ideas.” Um, yea, but in order to discuss the ideas shouldn’t we “understand” them, not just the fruit? Of course, the tricky part is that the ideas might convert us, and Swanson admits that he wouldn’t want his own children in battle.

Also, Swanson disccusses the “humanist ideas of the philosophers and the liberal arts masters” who have made their way into the high schools through Twain and Hawthorne and Shakespeare. Oh yes, the preface gives us a fair warning that government education “will destroy the faith within a generation or two.”

I’ll close with a story.

Once upon a time, I was a conservative evangelical who took a course on Marx criticism at the university. We had to read 60 pages of Marx theory twice a week. It was intense for a young undergrad student, and I was very frustrated that I had to read it in order to graduate. But my professor told me to just keep reading, and that some day I would understand. I might not agree, but I would understand. She was right. My worldview was not changed that semester, but my heart was changed. I began to see the heart of the Marxists (who, btw, do not always agree with each other), and I began to understand that most people who claim to be anti-Marx do not even know what Marx taught, let alone what the late 20th century Marxists theorists discuss.

And that, my friends, was the beginning of my open-minded journey. When I read a new philosophical idea, I read it, and read it, and read it. Sure I’m skeptical when I approach a text very different than my own philosophy. But skeptical and closed-minded are different. I am not a rationalist, but Descrates teaches me something anyway. I am not a Marxist, but Marx teaches me something anyway.

In summary, Kevin Swanson cut the conversation off before it even began. I hope to open the conversation back up. Ideas are not just worth going to battle with; they are aslo worth wrestling with because ideas don’t just destroy us. Ideas also have the ability to transform us.

Like this:

I am not a rationalist, but Descrates teaches me something anyway. I am not a Marxist, but Marx teaches me something anyway.

Just so. This is what an educated mind does, finds value where value can be found that has nothing to do with right or wrong, agreeing or disagreeing with this perspective or that; it’s all about the learning where learning can be had, and for that we have a long list from an array of people who took the time and made the effort to explain what their thinking was (and is) about a host of notions.

http://jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com/ jesuswithoutbaggage

Oh no! I have always liked Mark Twain and now I have to get rid of his dangerous books. Huckleberry Finn was one of my favorites.

Lana, I like your review of this book; it seems very insightful and balanced.

http://www.wideopenground.com Lana

Huckleberry Finn is seriously my all time childhood classic favorite.

Omkara

” Of course, Swanson does not want a conversation as he repeats that we should “analyze a man’s philosophies, not by the ideas,” but “by the fruit of his life and his work.”

But he doesn’t apply the same to his beloved evangelical homeschooling parents does he? Otherwise their fruit (anonymous apostates) would be a clue to him that the philosophy they tried to raise their kids by does not work. Nope. In that case the idea (evangelical homeschooling) is just honky dory and the fruit need not be looked at.

Lana Hope

You are so right! haha

jesuswithoutbaggage

Omkara, this was the common reasoning when I was a fundamentalist:

* God promised in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
* A child in fact departs from the beliefs of the group
* Obviously, the parents failed to train up the child properly so the child’s damnation is their fault

I cannot express all the unnecessary guilt and misery this caused to parents.

http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com fiddlrts

I would take this even further and note that several of Swanson’s close associates within the Patriarchy movement – people with whom he shares ideas and has shared the podium – also have some rather rotten fruit. But of course, the test doesn’t apply to them, right?